An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Nearly half of children in the United States are breathing dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a new report, as experts warned Donald Trump's expansive rollback of protections will make the situation worse. The 27th annual air quality report from the American Lung Association (ALA) released on Wednesday evaluates pollution across the country by grading levels of ground-level ozone -- also known as smog -- as well as year-round and short-term spikes in particle pollution, commonly referred to as soot. The report analyzed quality-assured data collected between 2022 and 2024. It found that 33.5 million children in the US -- 46% of those under 18 -- live in areas that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution. The report also found that 7 million children, or 10% of all children in the US, live in communities that failed all three measures. The report further found that communities of color are disproportionately exposed to unhealthy air. As a result, they are more likely to live with one or more chronic health conditions that make them more vulnerable to pollution, including asthma, diabetes, and heart disease. Although people of color make up 42.1% of the US population, they represent 54.2% of those living in counties with at least one failing grade, the report noted. It also found that a person of color is 2.42 times more likely than a white person to live in a community that fails all three pollution measures. Smog remains the most widespread pollutant affecting Americans' health. Between 2022 and 2024, 38% of the US population -- approximately 129.1 million people -- were exposed to ozone levels that put their health at risk. This marks the highest number recorded in the ALA's report in six years, and a 3.9 million increase from the previous year. Several factors contributed to these unhealthy pollution levels, including extreme heat, drought and wildfires which have exposed a growing share of the population to harmful ozone, the report said. The regions most affected by high ozone levels include south-western states from California to Texas, as well as much of the midwest. This is mainly driven by smoke from Canada's 2023 wildfires crossing into the US, along with high temperatures and weather patterns that favored ozone formation in 2023 and 2024 -- particularly in southern states. More broadly, the report found that climate change is intensifying ozone pollution by boosting precursor emissions and creating atmospheric conditions such as higher temperatures and lower wind speeds that allow pollutants to build up and ozone to form. Another growing source of pollution: datacenters. The report notes how they rely on regional electricity grids where fossil fuels like methane gas and coal still account for a large portion of generation. Many datacenters also use dozens of large diesel-powered backup generators, which emit carcinogenic particulate matter. "Children's lungs are still developing," said Will Barrett, assistant vice-president of the ALA's Nationwide Clean Air Policy. "For their body size, they're breathing more air. And also, kids play outdoors, they're more active, they're breathing in more outdoor air [...]. So, air pollution exposure in children can contribute to long-term developmental harm to their lungs, new cases of asthma, increased risks of respiratory illness and other health considerations later in life."

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"Nevada quietly signed an agreement earlier this year with a company that collects location data from cellphones, allowing police to track a device virtually in real time," reports the Associated Press. "All without a warrant." The software from Fog Data Science, adopted this January in Nevada through a Department of Public Safety contract, pulls information from smartphone apps in order to let state investigators identify the location of mobile devices. The state is allowed more than 250 queries a month using the tool, which allows officers to track a device's location over long stretches of time and enables them to see what Fog calls "patterns of life," according to company documents from 2022. It can help them deduce where and when people work and live, with whom they associate and what places they visit, according to privacy experts... Traditionally, police must obtain a warrant from a judge to access cellphone location information — a process that can take days or weeks. And while cellphone users may be aware that they are sharing their location through apps such as Google Maps, critics say few are aware that such information can make its way to police... Other agencies in Nevada have been known to use technology similar to Fog. In 2013, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department acquired something known as a cell-site simulator that mimics cellphone towers and can sweep up signals from entire areas to track individuals, with some models capable of intercepting texts and calls. Police have not released detailed information about the technology since then. "Police in other states have said the technology (and its low price tag) has helped expand investigatory capacity," the article adds. But it also points out that Fog Data Science has a web page letting individuals opt out of all their data sets.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: An agreement with the Philippines to establish a high-tech industrial hub is the Trump administration's latest effort to lessen China's dominance over global supply chains. The deal to build up American manufacturing across a stretch of the island of Luzon, signed Thursday, will offer U.S. companies access to essential inputs such as critical minerals that bypass Beijing's control. The artificial-intelligence-powered manufacturing hub is planned for a 4,000-acre site given to the U.S. by Manila, said undersecretary of State for Economic Affairs Jacob Helberg. The U.S. will occupy the site rent-free and administer it as a special economic zone. The hub will have diplomatic immunity, such as the protections afforded to an American embassy, and operate under U.S. common law -- the first arrangement of its kind anywhere in the world. The two-year lease is renewable for 99 years. [...] "You can't build anything in Ohio if the minerals and the process materials are controlled by an adversary who can cut you off tomorrow," Helberg said in an interview. [...] The planned manufacturing hub is largely conceptual at this stage, and details, including which American companies will participate and just what they will build in the Philippines, are yet to be determined. [...] The administration will ask companies to put forward proposals to compete for a spot in building out the hub, giving priority to bids that will help move critical minerals processing and manufacturing off Chinese suppliers. Investment will have to come from private-sector companies -- not the U.S. government. Factories approved for operation in the hub will be highly automated, Helberg said, using autonomous systems to operate around the clock. The Philippines has a history of robust manufacturing, particularly in semiconductors, but that has stagnated in recent decades because of high energy and logistics costs. Companies will have to address in their proposals how they will contend with energy costs and workforce needs; they can send American workers overseas or hire locally, Helberg said.

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"Robotic bird decoys are being deployed at Grand Teton National Park," reports Interesting Engineering, "to influence the behavior of real sage grouse and help restore a declining population.". Robotics mentor Gary Duquette describes the machines as "kind of a Frankenbird." (SFGate shows one of the robot birds charging up with a solar panel... "Recorded breeding calls are played at the scene, with clucking and cooing beginning at 5 a.m. each day.") Duquette builds the birds with a team of high school students, telling WyoFile that at school they "don't really get to experience real-world problems" where failures lurk. So while their robot birds may cost $150 in parts, the practical experience the students get "is priceless." Spikes in the electric currents burned out servo motors as the season of sagebrush serenades loomed, Duquette said. "The kids had to learn the difference between voltage and amperage...." To resolve the problem, the team wired a voltage converter in line with the Arduino controller and other elements on an electronic breadboard. "We pulled through and got it done in time," he said... A noggin fabricated by a 3D printer tops the robo-grouse. Wyoming Game and Fish staffers in Pinedale supplied grouse wings from hunter surveys, and body feathers came from fly-tying supplies at an angling store. Packaging foam from a Hello Fresh meal kit replicates white breast feathers, accented by yellow air sacs... The Independent wonders if more national parks would be visited by robot birds... During this year's breeding season, which runs through mid-May, researchers are using trail cameras to track whether real sage grouse respond to the robotic displays and return to the restored lek sites. If successful, officials say similar robotic systems could eventually be used in other national parks facing wildlife management challenges.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Women in the U.S. gave birth to roughly 710,000 fewer children last year compared with the nation's peak in 2007, according to preliminary data released (PDF) this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Lead researcher Brady Hamilton, a demographer with the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, said the latest one percent drop in "general fertility" from 2024 to 2025 is part of a long-running downward trend. "Since 2007, there's been a decline in the general fertility rate [in the U.S.] of 23%," Hamilton told NPR. The impact of that change in real numbers is sizable: In 2007, there were 4,316,233 babies born. Last year, even though the nation's population as a whole is larger, there were only 3,606,400 newborns. There's no consensus over why women and couples have shifted their behavior so significantly. Some experts point to economic factors, others say cultural influences, and better access to education and contraception for women are driving the change. "We're seeing big drops in fertility rates for young women, teenagers and women in their 20s," said economist Martha Bailey, head of the California Center for Population Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. "What's not yet clear is whether or not those same women will go on to have children later on." "People are having the number of children they want and that they can afford at a time that makes the most sense for them," she said. "What I don't think anyone is in favor of is a Handmaid's Tale type policy regime, where we're trying to talk families into having children they don't want." One silver lining in the data is the 7% decline in teen pregnancies in 2025. Bianca Allison, pediatrician and associate professor at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, said: "What is actually affecting the birth rates are likely lower rates of teen pregnancy overall, which is in the context of higher use of contraception and lower sexual activity for youth, and then also continued access to abortion care."

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